XII LIFE AND WORKS OF NICOLAUS STENO 



rally not of his own choosing and therefore in itself limited, partly 

 because he was so frequently interrupted by external circumstances, 

 Steno hardly ever pursued the problem, which had raised his interest, 

 until he came so near solving it, as was at all possible; on the contrary 

 he broke off his investigation of a problem, in some cases even several 

 times, to return to it, when he had the opportunity of doing so. This 

 accounts for the fact that so few of his publications are complete in 

 themselves; they nearly always appeared as the continuations of 

 previous works or as the beginnings of works to come. For that 

 reason the contents of his writings will be analyzed in the following 

 pages, not in the succession in which he published them, but accor* 

 ding as the several parts of his publications are connected with one 

 another by the nature of the questions he attempted to solve. It is a 

 matter of course that Steno made many examinations and solved 

 many problems, which are either of minor interest or were not 

 directly connected with the questions, to which he more especially 

 devoted himself. These latter can be divided into different groups, 

 the most important of which are: The Glands, the Lymphatic 

 System, the Heart, the Muscles, the Development of the Embryo, the 

 Sexual Organs, the Fishes, and in the case of all these groups both the 

 anatomical and physiological sides of the questions. There are, more* 

 over, subjects which — only apparently, however — are remote from 

 these: the Occurrence and Development of Fossils and Crystals, and 

 the Origin of the Strata of the Earth. 



Before going into a detailed account of what were Steno's contribu* 

 tions to the various groups in question, we will in a few words draw 

 attention to some phases of his personality as a man of science, phases 

 in which he differed from most of the scientist of his time. Not only 

 in his ingenuity, which was greater, fresher and more spontaneous 

 than that of the majority, did he surpass most of his contemporaries 

 in the scientific world and, without exaggeration, inscribe his name 

 among those of the greatest men of his day; not only on the strength 

 of his unusual powers did he distinguish himself; it was perhaps 

 above all through his scientific method. He asked his questions and 

 gave his answers as a scientist of the twentieth century; and deeply 

 religious though he was, he never for a moment introduced any super* 

 natural element in his solutions of problems of natural science. And 

 while the majority of his contemporaries were, before all, scholars, and, 



' ) from about the time when Steno took Holy Orders his development retrograded, even as 

 tar .is his way of looking at nature was concerned. In his chief geological work (De Solido Intra 

 SoliJum &c.) when touching upon the questions of rock-crystals, gems, precious and base metals, he 

 had exclusively dealt with their formation and occurrence, but when he later on mentioned these very 

 things in a sermon, he merely considered them from a religious point of view, dwelling on how 

 their symbolic meaning was to be looked upon by markind. See Stenonis Nicolai Opera Medic. 

 I'aht. 36. Sermo XL in R. Bibliotcca Lauremiana in Florence. 



